Extreme Malice

  Chapter 18

  Friday, November 11th 1:34 pm

  Eight weeks passed since Donna’s death. Jack settled into a routine, and he was back at work five days a week. He still felt like someone was watching him, but he had no more encounters with camera flashes or strangers following him. He was starting to believe he had imagined the flash that night in the garage, but was unable to let his guard down.

  Jack saw Fred a few times in passing. They talked briefly each time. There was no new news about Josh, but it sounded as if the trial might be happening much sooner than anticipated. Fred seemed to think it was going to take place in early December, and the possible date was confirmed by Brad.

  Jack called Donna's parents to ask them if they wanted to get together, but they declined. Jack was a bit hurt, but he understood. Until the trial was over and all of the details were out in the open, he doubted he would be seeing much of Brenda or Andrew.

  When the temperature permitted, Jack went for evening jogs, but he preferred not to run when the temperature dipped below freezing. He was getting used to running alone now and missed Donna a little less each day. On colder days, he was back at the gym for his workouts. He rarely saw Dean there anymore and wondered if he was purposefully avoiding him. When he did come across Dean, not much was said, but Dean always let Jack know he was still gunning for him.

  Jack was now highly paranoid, but no one watching him would notice anything unusual about his behavior. He had created a list of people to keep an eye out for and analyzed the little things about those he watched. He began to understand each person a little bit better. He could easily remember the last time he saw certain people. He could even predict how they were about to behave. His awareness, though heightened greatly by his paranoia, was smooth, and he knew how to work with it. He noticed the young girl with the nose ring on many occasions; she was always on the same road with one of the same five different girlfriends. And she always clicked away with her cell phone camera every where she went.

  He noticed the neighbor's kids with their cell phones. He archived information on each kid in his mind. He had never noticed how many young kids there were in his town and especially his neighborhood. One consistent observation; he didn’t see any of these kids ever take a picture with their cell phone when they were on the street alone.

  Unlike the teenagers with the cell phones, the true camera aficionados were almost always alone and focused on the subject at hand. Most didn’t notice anything outside the scope of what they were shooting. Jack ran into David Chow on numerous occasions, and he also stuck to his usual pattern. David could be found at various times of the day along the river path behind Jack's house, snapping photos up the river valley, or downtown near Jack’s office, at the older, historic buildings. Jack stored information on David away in the file of his brain just like all the others and continued to watch for the extraordinary occurrence.

  He noticed patterns everywhere: the secretaries he knew and saw at lunch each day, the shop workers arriving and opening up in the morning, and the university students scurrying from all directions around the town and funneling through the various streets towards the school. It was all repetitive and calculated.

  Jack liked what he saw. Planning around things that were consistent was easy. He already proved that it worked. The chaos surrounding him with Donna's death and the interrogations and investigations that followed were anything but planned and consistent and made Jack nervous.

  Life continued steadily each day, and Jack bided his time, waiting for everything to all settle out. The chaos would eventually fade, and he would finally be able to carry on just like he did before Donna, nearly three years ago. Though he missed her dearly, he was almost exactly in the place he wanted to be. He knew it would still take until after the trial before he would feel entirely himself again.